TAUNTON — A representative of a growing medical device and surgical robotics company being courted by the town of Norton said there's still time for Taunton to make a counteroffer.

"If there's an opportunity I missed then I certainly would be open to that," said David LaSalle, chief operating officer of Orthopaedic Synergy, parent company of OMNIlife science Inc., which has a facility adjacent Liberty & Union Industrial Park in East Taunton.

But LaSalle said he and his partners won't sit on their hands and be informed that they have to find new business lodgings.

"We like being in Taunton, but we're not getting any comfort that they will not be going there," he said.

LaSalle was referring to the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribe and their stated goal of building a lavish resort casino in a section of the industrial park that includes land on which LaSalle's company now sits.

LaSalle said Norton officials invited him to a meeting this past week to discuss the possibility of moving out of Taunton into the Norton Commerce Center, which abuts Taunton's Myles Standish Industrial Park near Interstate 495.

The town has scheduled a Feb. 24 meeting to discuss granting the company a property tax discount known as tax increment financing, or TIF.

"We're always excited when we can use a TIF to create jobs and generate tax revenue," said Robert Kimball, Norton's selectmen chair.

LaSalle said the OMNIlife component needs a 40,000-square-foot facility. He said it's all but certain the company will expand the facility and its operations in the coming years.

That's why, he said, they can't sit back and gamble on the possibility that the Mashpee tribe and its Malaysian backers might fail in securing government approval to put land into trust — which would all but assure an Indian reservation and casino in East Taunton, and force the company to vacate the building it leases from Woburn-based The Maggiore Companies.

LaSalle said his broker began looking for a new site at least five months ago. The report he got from the broker, he said, was that there's currently nothing in Myles Standish Industrial Park that can be developed as the type of turnkey project being offered by Condyne Real Estate Development, the Quincy company that owns the Norton industrial park.

Both Dick Shafer and Louis Ricciardi said that isn't the case.

Ricciardi is president of Taunton Development Corporation, the non-profit that for years has marketed and developed what is now one of the premier industrial parks in Massachusetts. Shafer, who previously was Taunton's economic development director, has been assisting the TDC since his retirement.

"I'm a little surprised to hear that," Shafer said. "We have exiting land on our new road that is ready to go."

Page 2 of 2 - Shafer said he was referring to the Charles F. Colton Road that was established in 2012.

OMNIlife currently employs 70 people, LaSalle said. They specialize in the manufacturing of artificial hips and knees.

He and his two partners, George Cippoletti, who is president, and Edward Cheal started the company in 1999 after working together for years in Raynham's Johnson & Johnson facility. They also since then have worked with engineer Diana McCue.

LaSalle said they left J&J because the company was moving its orthopedic division at the time to a facility to another state.

"All of our jobs were being relocated to Indiana," he said.

Instead the three took their accumulated knowledge and experience — what LaSalle calls the "very best of J&J" — and began renting space on Taunton Green above the office of the late Ted Strojny, an attorney who went on to become mayor of Taunton.

The company originally was called Apex Surgical. It later merged with a Californian manufacturer of leg braces called Omni and eventually moved to a small industrial park in Lakeville.

It later moved to Raynham Woods Commerce Center, and in 2010 purchased Praxim Medivision, a French company specializing in proprietary medical robotic equipment for full knee and hip replacement.

The company then established a second sister company in New Zealand called Enztec, which specializes in software and R&D solutions in the field of orthopedic medicine.

LaSalle said his company is among a field that constitutes 15 percent of a multi-billion-dollar medical device industry, the latter of which incudes Johnson & Johnson.

"We're always looking five years out and beyond," he said.

LaSalle, 48, said he and his partners later this year will change the name of the parent company to Omni Orthopaedic, to avoid any confusion with so-called life-science companies.